setup

Raspberry Pi Cluster headless setup with VNC

Yesterday, I was in Providence RI presenting a workshop with the CSinParallel folks at SIGCSE'22. As part of the workshop, we demo’d the self organizing clusters that my students use at West Point (shown below): Before I continue, I should mention that these clusters are truly a reflection of the collaborative effort that is CSinParallel. Specifically: The case design was developed at West Point by myself and Frank Blackmon The self organizing cluster concept an initial image was developed at St.

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Raspberry Pi OS - 64-bit headless with VNC

EDIT: In April 2022, the Raspberry Pi foundation no longer allows default passwords on Raspberry Pis. Therefore, instructions as written originally here no longer work. I have modified them slightly to show how to complete the headless setup using the new Raspberry Pi imager. The original text still appears, but is struck out. Today’s post is about setting a Raspberry Pi running the 64-bit Raspberry Pi OS for classroom use. This setup is very portable, uses very few cables, and costs about $60.

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Raspberry Pi 4

I know it’s been a while since I’ve posted, but I’m still working on Raspberry Pi (and Raspberry Pi related projects). My latest project is Dive into Systems, a free on-line textbook for introductory computer systems concepts that I co-author with Swarthmore professors Tia Newhall and Kevin Webb. You can learn more about it here: http://www.diveintosystems.cs.swarthmore.edu Of course, the other bit of news is that the Raspberry Pi 4 was released earlier this summer, and it not only boasts gigabit Ethernet, but configurations that support up to 4 GB of memory.

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Raspberry Pi Cluster - Image Creation with MPI

I have a few more posts in mind for this summer, but I wanted to create this one while the information was still fresh in my head. Imagine my dismay when I discovered that the original Raspberry Pi cluster tutorial created by Dr. Simon Cox at the University of South Hampton no longer seems to exist. This has always been to me the de-facto go-to tutorial for creating Raspberry Pi images.

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Raspberry Pi Cluster NFS

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve posted! It’s another summer and I am creating yet another cluster. One thing people may not know is back in the summer of 2014 as I anxiously waited for the release of the Parallella I was originally going to use Raspberry Pis in my parallel computing course. Of course the Parallella came out, and so I put my Pis back on the shelf and concentrated on the Parallella for the course.

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NFS working on the Parallella

Phew! After a bit of effort, I was able to add an external hard drive to my parallella cluster, and make it accessible to all the nodes by mounting it on a NFS. I’ve updated the parallella cluster post to include this information. Visit it here to learn how to set up NFS on your parallella cluster too!

Get Wireless on the Parallella

I haven’t posted here in a while, mainly since I’ve been very busy with other things. Recently, I downloaded the updated image from Adapteva and started experimenting with it. Needless to say, the image that Parallella is now distributing is a LOT better than the one my students and I used last year during the course. For one thing, the new version of the kernel has support for wireless. Getting connecting to wireless is a cinch using the new image.

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Creating a Parallella Cluster

The goal of this tutorial is to create a simple Beowulf cluster using Parallella boards. After completing these instructions, you should have a simple Parallella Cluster with N nodes. In the examples that follow, N=4. However, the tutorial can be used to create clusters of any size N. These instructions are adapted from the raspberry pi cluster instructions provided by Dr. Simon Cox from the University of Southampton. Unlike those instructions, I designed this tutorial to enable students to assemble a working parallella cluster within one hour.

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Setting up SSH for your Parallella

The goal of this tutorial is to allow you to connect to your Parallella board from your laptop using an SSH connection. If you don’t have an HDMI monitor, SSH is the the principle way to run programs remotely and transfer files between the Parallella board and your computer. This page is based off of the original tutorial I wrote in November 2014. Special thanks to 2LT Zach Ramirez and Jim Beck for their help in putting together the initial draft of this tutorial.

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Parallella Setup Tutorial

The goal of this tutorial is to allow you to set up your Parallella board for first use. These instructions are adapted from the original SD-card guide provided on the Parallella website (update: these instructions have been improved quite a bit since I wrote this tutorial.) This page is based off of the original tutorial I wrote in November 2014. What you will need This tutorial assumes that you bought a Parallella Desktop Edition and have access to a Windows machine.

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